I'm not going to trample over your carcass as we exit the stadium screaming, "I believe that we will win." I've never painted my face red, white and blue. Growing up, there was no room on our street for another ball, not with jump shots to make, fly patterns to run, bats to swing and pucks to shoot.

I have nothing against soccer, I just have no real relationship with it, no context. And that the United States men's national team didn't qualify for a single World Cup tournament in the 1960s and '70s when I may have taken notice didn't help.

When I was around 15, I did sign up for a summer recreational soccer league but each game I kept getting slapped with something called a "red card." They called it "futbol" but I guess I misunderstood. I didn't last the season.

When I first came to work in Rochester, I was assigned to cover a men's professional team called the Flash. Well-meaning soccer folks told me stories about the glory days of the Rochester Lancers, how they celebrated a North American Soccer League title. They said I'd love covering games at historic Holleder Stadium.

But Holleder Stadium, named for a beloved war hero, looked like the ruins of the Roman Coliseum and the team was in worse shape. The owners couldn't make payroll and the squad folded after just two years on the beat. My one memory is interviewing coach Joe Horvath, a former Lancers star and Hungarian National Team member, as he chain smoked cigarettes outside the locker room, watching occasionally for falling chunks of concrete.

Despite my shoddy soccer background, I find my interest in the current World Cup happenings in Brazil rising like a free kick by the day.

Fans gathered in Washington to watch the intense match against Ghana, the team that had knocked the USA out of the previous two World Cups.
AP

Yes, soccer gets kicked around by us card carrying members of the United States Big 4 Club — football, baseball, basketball, hockey. But that's just a defense mechanism. We know we're in the minority. While we're debating Manning vs. Brady, the rest of the world is talking about Ronaldo vs. Messi.

Whereas a Super Bowl draws about 125 million television viewers globally, a World Cup final does about 350 million. Last Monday's USA-Ghana match drew 11 million viewers, making it the most viewed men's soccer game ever on ESPN. And momentum is just starting to build. Let's just say a lot of chicken wings, enchiladas and sauerkraut is going down.

Coming around like graduations, colonoscopies and the Olympics — once every four years — the World Cup brings the world together through soccer, where competition involves Gatorade not hand grenades. In this context, it rises above sport and becomes something so much more.

In Brazil, pride in country is etched on the face of every flag-waving fan in places like Sao Paulo, Salvador, Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro. And this time, the United States takes a backseat to nobody in the number of passionate fans who have traveled to this futbol Mecca to cheer. And the real good news is that there's a team worth cheering for.

Team USA, which has qualified for every World Cup since 1990 but has finished no better than eighth (Korea, 2002), got off on the right foot with a 2-1 victory over nemesis Ghana and Sunday takes on powerful Portugal and Ronaldo. Losing super striker Jozy Altidore to a hamstring injury was like dumping sugar in USA's gas tank. But world stages are where heroes are made. Like young defenseman John Brooks, whose winning header against Ghana made headlines.

Brooks is among five USA players with dual German citizenship — each has a U.S. serviceman dad and a German mother. He grew up in Berlin but playing for Team USA was an easy choice: the chance for more playing time internationally.

"It's an honor,'' he said, "to wear this jersey."

The U.S. men's program took a bold step forward in 2011 with the hiring of coach Juergan Klinsmann, 50, a soccer hero in Germany who hoisted the Cup in 1990 and coached his country's national team in 2006 to a third-place finish.

Klinsmann was perceived as a madman for leaving veteran Landon Donovan, 32, a veteran of three World Cups and Team USA's career scoring leader, off his roster for Brazil. Younger players and players predominantly from the German, English and other top European leagues appealed to him. Seeing how nothing America has tried in the past has worked, it's in Klinsmann we trust.

And if USA somehow upsets Germany on June 26? Oh boy.

I may just run from the house and trample the dog screaming "I believe that we will win.''